October 15, 2011

I Meditate NY has created an urban meditation series for the BMW Guggenheim Lab to be held every Saturday at 10 am from August 6 until October 15. This series introduces meditation to empower participants to contemplate what “comfort” means to them. It provides a technique for examining the inner environment to enhance the outer environment. Sessions aim to challenge comfort zones and provide a tool to create sustainable comfort: comfort that comes from within and goes with you. Each session includes an introduction to meditation.

For the past three months, we have been working with Lab visitors to test the psychological effects of public spaces near the Lab. Come and hear about the early results from the experiment. Learn how neuroscience has begun to influence architecture and design. Join panelists as they brainstorm new experiments and recommendations for happier spaces. With Dr. Colin Ellard, author of You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall, Dr. Esther Sternberg, author of Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being, Lab Team member Charles Montgomery, and others.

Nearly seven months have passed since the five Lab Team members were pulled together from disparate parts of the world for an initial meeting in New York to collaborate on how to address the theme of Confronting Comfort for the first BMW Guggenheim Lab. Experimentation was the imperative, leading to a deep exploration of visible and invisible systems that exist in our everyday lives, shaping our understanding and levels of comfort. Tasked with developing a spectrum of free public programs at the New York Lab, the team put together ten compelling weeks of experiments, discussions, debates, workshops, panels, tours, and screenings guided by the theme.

How have the New York Lab Team’s initial ideas of comfort and their system’s approach to the topic changed? What kinds of conclusions and lessons have come forth? Join Lab Team members Olatunbosun Obayomi, Omar Freilla, Charles Montgomery, Elma van Boxel, and Kristian Koreman in a final conclusive talk as they share highlights from their time in New York, give their insight on the future of the city and First Park, and impart their thoughts and takeaways from their time here at the New York Lab.

The research and design collective spurse have spent the last eleven weeks conducting crowd-sourced research at the Lab. They have diagnosed the hidden frameworks of our consumer paradigm to reveal what’s at the core of current debates about sustainability and the state of urban environments. The results of their research offer a radical challenge to our certainties concerning resource use, equality, and the future of our planet. In addition, spurse will present an audacious set of pragmatic alternatives grounded in rethinking public space, reimagining the relation between humans and non-humans, and developing tactics of the commons.

You’ve had the opportunity to create your own ideal city by making collective and individual decisions online and in the Lab while playing the game Urbanology. Designed by Local Projects, the game allows participants to be city planners for a day, lobbying for various initiatives regarding innovation, transportation, health, affordability, wealth, lifestyle, sustainability, and livability. With each game, a different city with varying priorities was built.

Data from every session has been collected. Which initiatives took precedence and which took the backseat? What does the future city look like and how does the data compare to your ideal city? Join Keeli Shaw of Local Projects as she reveals the aggregate data collected from those games, which spurred heated debates in the Lab and online, and see how the comprehensive results compare to your own.

Sharon Zukin, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and City University Graduate Center, takes us on a walk through the physical, social, and cultural meanings of "comfort" in New York's public spaces—from places for standing, sitting, and sleeping, to places for being with the same or different people—asking along the way whether cities must have places that offend our "comfort level."

The Comfort Series lectures, a compilation of talks at the Lab given by local and global authorities in a diversity of fields, have shed light on new ways of perceiving and addressing comfort and discomfort in our daily lives on a local and global scale. As we consider comfort over a spectrum of variables through the shifting landscape of urban living, what patterns on the topic have risen? What can we take away from these talks? BMW Guggenheim Lab Public Programs Manager Rosanna Flouty shares her thoughts and insights on the ideas that were introduced throughout the run of the Lab and reflects on how to negotiate those overlapping and diverging thoughts.

BMW Guggenheim Lab Advisory Committee member Wang Shi has scaled the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Everest. He is also the founder and chairman of China Vanke Co., Ltd., China’s largest residential real estate developer and a leader in the field of green building and socially conscious urban development. Join us as Wang discusses how his passion for mountain climbing has taught him to cherish modern civilized life while being ever conscious of our environment.

For the past two and a half months, the inaugural BMW Guggenheim Lab has offered fifty-five days of free events and been host to close to two hundred programs. Maria Nicanor, Assistant Curator, Architecture, and David van der Leer, Assistant Curator, Architecture and Urban Studies, argue that our greatest resource in reimagining urban space is right beneath our noses—the people. Join us as the curators describe how user-generated content can be harnessed and repurposed for solving the most pressing issues facing our cities and environment today.

Cities are becoming larger and more complex. Gary Hustwit's new documentary, Urbanized, highlights innovative urban design practices across the globe in regions facing daunting social and ecological challenges. We see how a subtle understanding of human behavior can inspire creative problem solving that ultimately transforms a city’s social well-being.

For two and a half months, the BGL has investigated how our need for comfort positively and negatively impacts our urban environment. Moderated by Lab member Charles Montgomery, this wide-ranging discussion features a diverse guest panel who will respond to clips from Urbanized and bring their own priorities and ideas to the table in an effort to see how we might urbanize with comfort.